Can a young lawyer be less of a planner and more of a dreamer?

“Should I join a big law firm or a small law firm?”, “Should I focus on corporate or litigation?”, “Should I go in house now or later?” . 

This is the conundrum faced by final year law graduates. How to choose the “best” option against the limited options and effectively trying to manage the outcomes in hope of a “future proof” legal career? 

Unfortunately, there has never been an ‘end all, be all’ answer to all the questions above.

We are faced with a global pandemic, uncertain political landscape, and with an impending economic slowdown, there are a plethora of other uncontrolled variables that are beyond our control. 

For instance, getting a pupillage is a challenge now.  The usual law firms that usually hire pupils had to take major cuts in salaries may wish to conserve their cash and to ‘wait and see’ until the situation gets better before hiring anyone. If you are a final year law student, what can you do?

I want to share a different perspective.

Careers are a ‘jungle gym’, not a corporate ladder

The legal career path in a law firm used to be predictable. Start out as a pupil, get retained as an associate, spend years of hard work alongside more experienced associates, then hopefully be offered a partnership in several years (usually five or six years) time. 

But the 'time and tested' traditional path is changing. Most law firms still operate an outdated and bloated business model developed centuries ago. The model is being disrupted under a myriad of economic pressures. Clients are expecting more transparency from law firms such as cost certainty over billable hours.  Also, a client now has a long list of alternative service providers to hire such as one of the Big Fours that can also complement other multidisciplinary services. 

Frustrated young lawyers knew there had to be a better way. We are seeing more “boutique law firms” set up now as more associates are no longer assured of partnership offers. Many left because they want to do things differently. And millennials no longer expect (or even want partnership) as they wish to keep their career options more open and flexible.

Life as a series of choices

Faced with these uncertainties, you should consider if you are doing pupillage just for the sake of doing pupillage, or is it because pupillage is really what you want to do now. 

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, in a commencement speech said:

“As organizations become less hierarchical, traditional career paths are shifting as well… The traditional metaphor for careers is a ladder. But I no longer think that holds—it doesn’t make sense in a less hierarchical world. Careers are not a ladder; they are a jungle gym … Look for opportunities, look for growth, look for impact, look for mission. Move sideways, move down, move off, move on. Build your skills, not your resume. Evaluate what you can do, not the title they’re going to give you… Don’t plan too much. Don’t expect a direct line. If I would have mapped out my career when I was sitting where you are, I would have missed my career.”

As a young corporate lawyer a decade ago, I had a flawed assumption (or maybe it was just my ego) that I needed to be a lawyer just because I read law.  And please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying you should not be a lawyer.

I know a final year law student who has been dabbling as a real estate agent. With the commission fees that he’s making and the sales team he has developed, he found out that he’s pretty good at it. Another one has been offering her services as a personal shopper. And people seem to love paying her to buy them stuff. If you love what you are doing now, why stop there now and join a law firm to complete a pupillage just for the sake of doing it?  

Lawyers should not only be found in a law firm or in an in house legal department. You can be a startup founder or an entrepreneur, a business journalist, a financial planner, a project manager, or even a CEO of the company of the future. 

Also, who says that you cannot get back into practice in the future?  Your last role can give you a unique perspective on how you deal with legal issues. Even in practice, a senior operations manager working in an asset heavy business (eg, oil and gas and automotive) would be able to negotiate or articulate issues involved in a procurement agreement better than a junior lawyer because of the technical issues involved. 

In my final year of law school,  we had a law student that was in his early 50s in our batch. I still remember his advice, “Life is like playing golf. It doesn't matter where the ball lands on the first hit. What matters, in the end, is for the ball to get into the hole."